The surrogate for Mitt Romney stands in the left-hand corner of Davis Hall Room 250 on the USF-St. Pete campus, warning that a presidential campaign isn’t as glamorous as it’s cracked up to be.
“You’re going to have to like pizza. Lots of Coca-Cola, lots of potato chips,” Jeff Antous says. “It’s really important to hear what people have to say… you need to ask questions, ask ‘What’s the reasoning behind that?’ You’re going to want to take notes.”
It’s a dizzying hour for the 23 students in political science professor Judithanne Scourfield McLaughlan’s “Road To The White House” class. They’re gathered on this Thursday morning two-and-a-half weeks before the January 31 presidential primary to hear pitches from the campaigns of virtually all of the Republicans who will be on the ballot: Romney, Paul, Perry (before he quit), Gingrich and Gary Johnson (who has quit the race but may run in the fall on the Libertarian ticket). Representatives for the Obama re-election team and the local Democratic and Republican parties are in the house as well.
After the presentations, the surrogates are told to stand in various parts of the classroom, where the Obama, Romney and to a lesser extent Paul spokespeople are quickly surrounded, while the others wait in vain for company. Today is decision time for the students, who must intern for at least 40 hours for one of the campaigns this semester, a critical part of their overall grade for the class.
Theoretically it’s a win-win for both groups, as the students get their hours, and the surrogates recruit some fresh meat to work for free in the weeks leading up to the GOP primary. Alas, no one swarms the spokespeople for Rick Perry, Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich, who play with their smartphones or stare ahead stoically.
The largest number of students surge toward Victoria Kirby, regional field director in West Central Florida for the Obama campaign. Close behind in number are six students who gather around the Mitt Romney surrogate, and three who want to hear more about Ron Paul. Ultimately, Santorum and Perry each get one student; Gingrich (whose campaign had not yet enjoyed its post-South Carolina bump) gets nobody.
This is the third such class that Scourfeld McLauchlan has taught in the eight years she’s been part of the USF St. Pete faculty. But it’s the first time she hasn’t taken the students to New Hampshire for the primary there, in part because the semester didn’t begin until after the vote in the Granite State. Because of that, as well as the fact that the Sunshine State is holding its primary in January (and Tampa is hosting the Republcan National Convention), she’s opted this year to keep her students in the area.
The party ideologies among the 23 students split down the middle, with 11 Republicans, 11 Democrats, and 1 independent. McLauchlan says that’s par for the courses she’s taught in Florida, with maybe a smidgen more Democrats in the usual classroom.
USF administrator Kiki Caruson, who taught political science classes for years at the Tampa campus, says that Tampa Bay area students run the gamut from conservative to libertarian to Democrat, which she calls “refreshing, because you can get much better discussion in class when not everyone thinks the same thing.”
Historically, young people have never voted in significant numbers in presidential elections, with 2008 being a notable exception. That’s according to an analysis by the Center for Information Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE), which reports that approximately 4 percent of eligible young voters in Iowa participated in the caucuses on Jan. 3, compared to 13 percent in ’08.
Much of the high turnout four years ago was due to the excitement surrounding Barack Obama’s historic run. CIRCLE says 51 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds voted in ’08, compared to just 21 percent in the 2010 Congressional elections.
The big recipient of the youth vote so far this year is the senior citizen on the debate stage, 76-year-old Ron Paul, whose dovish foreign policy and concerns about the Constitution and the escalating federal debt have attracted a cult-like following. A day after the presentations, a spokesperson for the Paul camp, Dan Tucker, emails his charges, laying down some rules about how to deal with voters while canvassing or phone banking. Those rules include “Never say anything negative to a volunteer” and “Never argue with a voter.” He emphasizes that, since it’s a grassroots organization, volunteers are empowered to make decisions. “When in doubt, make a decision and take action,” he writes. “Forgiveness is easily obtained if there was an error.” Jaryd Vartanian, 22, is in his first semester at USF-St. Pete. He says that, just as 9/11 was a wake-up call for the country in terms of national security, the debt problem should be regarded as a red alert re the nation’s finances.
Regarding Paul’s foreign policy views, which have made him anathema to the GOP establishment, Vartarian, who supported Mike Huckabee in the 2008 primaries before working for John McCain, says he thinks people freak out about the Texas congressman’s stances because they’re not willing to look at the U.S. from an objective standpoint.
“What if China set up a military base here and every once in a while blew up some civilian compounds because there are some ‘people of interest’ there?” he asks.
Patrick Dillard, 24, says Paul appeals to him because around a year ago he learned about the Libertarian philosophy and responded to its general tenets. Unlike most of the media establishment who believe Paul is competing throughout the primary season in order to obtain leverage at the convention, Dillard actually thinks the Texas congressman can win the nomination.
“The election until March is all proportionate delegates and not winner-take-all (except for Florida), so mathematically Ron Paul is not far behind Mitt Romney,” he says of the process to pick a nominee. But he also sees the Paul campaign as the best platform the Libertarians have ever had. “Both the Democratic and Republican parties are losing registered voters, and those voters have to go somewhere,” he says optimistically.
Dillard says the negativity of the campaign has also turned him off all of the other candidates, with the exception of the recently departed Jon Huntsman, whom he liked specifically because of his work as ambassador to China under Obama — definitely not a feeling shared among most Republicans.
Michael Kalmowicz, 19, is interning for Mitt Romney, and has already enjoyed his time working for the campaign. He received a phone call just days after signing up with Team Romney, requesting his presence in Tampa on MLK Jr. Day for a campaign ad to be aired in Florida in the days leading up to the Jan. 31 vote.
The Fort Lauderdale native was bitten by the political bug at an extremely young age. He interned for former Florida Democratic state Senator Steve Geller when he was a freshman in high school, and then after Geller was term-limited out, toiled for his successor, Eleanor Sobel.
He’s most passionate about Israel and states’ rights, going so far as calling himself “a Democrat” on that issue. By that he means he has no problems with the universal health care plan that Romney passed in Massachusetts, and believes it would be a noble thing for Florida to duplicate such an effort. But he doesn’t believe that the federal government should supersede the individual states, and therefore doesn’t support the health care reform plan bill signed into law by President Obama in 2010.
Epitomizing the undecided independent voter is 26-year-old Eli Dioso, who supported President Obama in 2008, and says he opted to intern for the former Massachusetts governor this time around after hearing Romney's pitch. When asked if that means he’s down on the president, Dioso notes that many of his contemporaries who have graduated from college can’t find a job, and thinks maybe a change at the top could make a difference. “There were a lot of broken promises,” he says, using a line that RNC Chair Reince Preibus and Romney have used.
Matt Brockmeier, 25, is also supporting Romney, though he said the choice was a close call with the other Utah Mormon in the race, Jon Huntsman (who dropped out of the race on MLK Day). He’s excited about interning for Romney, thinking it might lead to other opportunities in politics, though he’s been thinking about getting into public relations or marketing after he graduates this spring.
Brockmeier admits that only in the past couple of years when he started to support himself did he begin to get more politically involved, asking himself where his taxes were going. Like the college Republicans CL spoke with, he’s hardly an ideologue. “I don’t think anybody goes 100 percent on anything anymore.”
Kalmowicz says the same thing. He says most of his friends are Democrats, and in fact his roommate’s “Yes We Can” poster from the 2008 Obama campaign shares space right next to Romney’s “Believe in America” sign in their apartment.
Jaryd Vartarian says most of his contemporaries don’t share his beliefs. “They got involved with the Obama phenomenon,” he says, though he’s happy that his girlfriend is very conservative. But what bothers him more than anything else is the apathy he sees in his generation.
“The people my age are so energetic and could be such huge game changers, but they’re depressed about the system and don’t think it works for them,“ he laments, though after the debt ceiling debacle and other Washington failures over the past few years, an older demographic of Americans is saying the same thing.
This article appears in Jan 26 – Feb 1, 2012.